


California Evidence Code 970/971

by waferkya



Category: Mayans M.C. (TV)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Military Background, Wish Fulfillment, contract wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 06:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17178017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: “You got the Feds on your ass,” Bishop says, stern and God-like, with a thin line of worry splitting his forehead vertically. “And if you got the Feds on your ass…”“I know, I know. Then the whole club suffers,” Coco nods, and he’s trying to sound apologetic, not defensive as shit, but he can’t be expected to change the core of his personality in a split second.Coco messed up: he's risking serious prison time. Luckily for him, the club's lawyer finds a loophole that'll save his freedom... if he can bear to accept the terms, conditions, and consequences.





	California Evidence Code 970/971

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER. I'm not a lawyer, I've just watched all of The Good Wife thrice (so far) and I like to come up with idiotic plots...

Coco has been awake long enough that the big clock over the counter at the club looks like it’s melting off the wall, like some shitty piece of modern art or something. He feels listless and slow under the weight of everyone’s eyes. They’re all gathered at the bar, the entire charter, daring to look down on him like a bunch of disappointed parents—Christ, even Riz had the nerve to show up, does he think this is his great, shiny comeback?—and Coco knows that, when he speaks, his voice is gonna sound rough and jagged and it’ll betray him for exactly what he is: drunk, high as fuck, and in deep, deep shit.

He can’t stand the silence anymore, so he says, “’t was supposed to be just a prank,” like he’s a teenager that got caught spiking the pomegranate punch at prom. Except of course he’s not, he’s a fucking adult, a veteran, a survivor, and most importantly a Mayan, and as he speaks, he’s not looking up to sweet Ma and stern Pa, but into the face of a very sharply dressed, very confident lawyer.

The lawyer doesn’t blink. He seems to be evaluating Coco carefully; then he adjusts the wide, gold-rimmed reading glasses sitting on his nose, and writes something down. Two flicks of his wrist, and he’s a lefty, which makes Coco like him less, and then his eyes go back up, grey and assessing, calculating.

“Yeah, but now you got the Feds on your ass,” Bishop says, stern and God-like, with a thin line of worry splitting his forehead vertically. “And if you got the Feds on your ass…”

“I know, I know. Then the whole club suffers,” Coco nods, and he’s trying to sound apologetic, not defensive as shit, but he can’t be expected to change the core of his personality in a split second. It’s not the first time he has to remind himself that he’s lucky Bishop’s been in the force, which means he understands a lot of things about Coco—more than most people anyway—and, whatever he doesn’t get, he’s still more lenient towards. Bishop knows the mentality, he went through some of the same shit as Coco, and it puts him in a position of caution, of unspoken care. He knows he could’ve come out of the Corps more fucked up than Coco and it was just a roll of the dice that he didn’t; he respects that. Taza, for one, doesn’t look like he’s buying into the merciful spirit.

“Alright, Mr. Sabelotodo, I suppose you also know we don’t need this kind of heat right now,” he says, arms crossed over his puffed-out chest.

“Or ever,” Riz chimes in, tilting his head to the side, and Coco cannot, for the love of God, bite back a grin and a shitty comeback.

“You two look like you’re having fun. Anyone else wants to join in on the gangbang? I can give a pounding, as good as I get,” he says, opening up his arms in invitation. Sitting on his left, Gilly is getting riled up. Coco appreciates the loyalty, but he appreciates the sour, uncomfortable looks on Taza and Riz’s faces more.

“Shut up now,” Bishop says, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips because the bastard must remember banter in the Corps, and Coco’s little jab was nothing, in comparison. He looks down at the lawyer, who is the only other person in the room not standing on his feet—besides Coco and Gilly, and EZ perched on a stool at the bar—but also the only one who looks comfortable in his chair. “Tell him.”

This time, the lawyer does blink. He folds his hands on the table, and he looks so much like a fancy, Ivy-League-sort-of-thing Head of Department, that Coco wants to throw up. Not that he’d know what anything from an Ivy League college looks like in real life, but he can think up a pretty picture based on what he’s seen on TV. Besides, rich, white assmonkeys all look the same.

“The situation, right now, is fairly grim,” the lawyer says.

“What, no sugar-coating?” Coco sneers immediately, nodding his head up because, hey, he might be a fuck-up but he’s still the Alpha at this table.

Bishop steps up, puts a hand on the back of the lawyer’s chair. “Let the man do his job,” he says, cool and collected, and Coco immediately loses more than half his bite. His shoulders sag, he nods at the lawyer to go on but there’s no authority in it.

“This is grand theft, in connection with the burglary of a record store. With your history, a misdemeanor charge is unlikely. With your… connections,” and he’s careful when he says that, looking slowly at the faces around the room in a move that says without saying: _considering what valuable information you might spill, if they push and prod in just the right places_ , “you’re looking at felony charges. For the grand theft, the maximum sentences is three years. However, you were found in possession of just enough marijuana to risk being charged with intent to sell, as well. Add to this the fact that you were caught near the border… and that the record store you, uh, pranked, is owned by the Governor’s daughter…”

“Situation normal, all fucked up,” Coco says with a grin. The lawyer nods in polite agreement.

“For both of you,” he adds like an afterthought, and this is when Coco’s brain is finally electrocuted back into consciousness.

“What?” he says, and while his mouth hangs open, his eyes squeeze like he’s trying to see the fucking strings that make up reality. Yeah, he knows about science and shit: his CO back in the desert was a knucklehead of a physicist and liked the sound of his voice a little too much.

The lawyer simply looks up and behind him, and Coco doesn’t have to turn around to know that Angel is standing there, blocking the door. He knows, because Angel has been drilling holes through the nape of his neck for the past half hour—and also, he knows, because if they’re in the same room, Coco knows exactly where Angel is. He always has, for the past however many years they’ve known each other. It’s a cool, weird trick that his mind plays on him, and he doesn’t really control it, can’t exactly explain it, but it’s proven useful in more than one occasion, and especially if machine gun fire was involved.

“He did nothing,” Coco says with way too much force; now that his brain is back online, he understands what the lawyer is implying.

“He was talking to you on the phone,” the lawyer points out, almost apologetic.

“Angel is _not_ involved in this,” Coco insists, because he’d rather be skinned alive than cost Angel his freedom. It’s a perfectly normal, healthy, proportional reaction. He has to fist his hands to keep them from shaking, and then he bites the inside of his lip to keep from slamming his fists on the table.

The wooden floor creaks and moans as Angel steps closer and it sets every nerve in Coco’s body on fire. This is new, Coco realizes with a numb, distant feeling. Angel is a constant, tried and proven over time. He’s always there, ready and eager to have you drown in the kindness and care of those goddamn king-of-the-dog-shelter eyes of his; willing to take the weight of your mother’s corpse onto his shoulders, and load it into the trunk of his car to go out in the desert and bury it for you; more than happy to waste his summer on your couch, getting high and watching space and time unravel on an empty wall, forever, either reveling in the silence or talking your ear off about anything, and somehow knowing exactly when to do what, even if he never had to ask a single question. 

For Coco, being around Angel is like wearing noise-cancelling headphones in his brain. The paranoia subsides, laughter and his terrible humor come out bubbling from deep inside his belly. Angel has an impossible, miraculous way of making Coco feel safe.

When the cops pulled him over, Angel’s husky, soft-spoken voice over the phone ordering him to _stay calm_ and _don’t touch the gun_ was the only thing that kept Coco from making an even bigger mess out of this. Then, years or days or, actually, only a few, endless hours later, Coco stumbled into the club, still high and straight outta county, summoned here to get proper legal advice and straighten out his story. Angel was already here, but he hasn’t said a word, hasn’t even laid eyes on him.

Through grinding teeth, Coco can admit to himself that getting the cold shoulder from Angel is a big part of the reason why he’s feeling so on edge, so fucking out of it and ready to burst at the seams. For the first time since they’ve known each other, knowing that Angel is watching is back doesn’t make him calm, but rather, it only unnerves him more. This is fucked up. Coco makes himself turn around: he looks up and meets Angel’s eyes for a moment. As usual, it is groundbreaking: taking in Angel’s strangely closed-off, pinched expression, only now Coco realizes that he must’ve already talked to Bishop, to the lawyer. And the reason why he isn’t speaking to him—can barely bring himself to hold his gaze—must be because they’ve come up with a plan Angel already knows that Coco will hate.

“Shit,” he says, just under his breath. Angel’s eyes flutter closed, like he’s sending a prayer to a higher God than Bishop, but everyone knows that the Heavens don’t hear a thing that happens inside the gate of the scrapyard.

The lawyer looks pleased: he must’ve followed Coco’s train of thought right off his face as well.

“We talked,” Bishop says, and in that _we_ is hiding something that makes Coco’s skin crawl. “You have to understand, we’re on the map now. The Feds’ll come after you with everything. They’ll hit anyone in your life, because they need the intel you could give up so much.”

“I know,” Coco says, all but pouting.

“We can’t look bad in front of the Cartel.”

“I know.”

“So I could—I should, even—let you face the music and do ten, fifteen years,” Bishop says, his voice even like he’s conducting a business transaction of apples and oranges. Coco thinks about being forty and in prison and in the back of his mind he’s already counting how many sleeping pills he has left from the last time he raided Celia’s medicine cabinet. Yeah, he’ll off himself before he goes inside. “But our friend here,” and he nods at the lawyer, “our beautifully compensated friend, he found a way to keep you safe, free, and available to do what _I_ need you to for _my_ club. Both of you.”

“Dios mio, Prez, spill it already,” Coco snaps. “What do I gotta do? I’d sell my mother but unless you got use for a rotting corpse… c’mon, just tell me what.”

A moment of silence, and awkwardness, stretches out far too long for Coco to be comfortable. Small looks are exchanged across the room: Taza to Bishop, Bishop to Tranq, Tranq to the lawyer and then to Gilly, Gilly firmly to the table, the table back at the lawyer, the lawyer to EZ—which is the one thing that upsets Coco the most—then EZ to Bishop, Bishop to Angel, Angel to the ceiling and finally, Bishop to Coco, who slowly curls his lips into a nasty grin.

“So, everyone knows ‘cept me,” he spits, dripping contempt, “I’m feelin’ warm and cozy all over,” and he’s looking at Angel now, unabashed in his disappointment. Angel frowns and finally, after what feels like centuries, he deigns to speak to Coco, and it’s stupid how much of a relief it is, even if he just says:

“Let him explain.”

And for a second, Coco is afraid that EZ will walk up to the table and lay out the plan. Instead, and luckily enough, it’s the lawyer that sits up even better, and clears his throat with a gentle cough.

“In the mess you’ve made, I have to admit that you’ve been quite lucky. The most damning evidence is circumstantial, and I can throw out the rest of charges with the right… push,” the lawyer smiles, shark-like and confident. “The only problem I can’t work with myself, is the phone call between you and Angel. The Feds will surely get a recording. Also, Angel told me that text messages were exchanged?”

Coco nods, numbly. He thinks back on whatever he can remember and, yeah, it’s not pretty: he’d been driving drunk and high, in a stolen car, sending texts like rifle fire out to Angel, who eventually just called. Coco spilled details of his crime all over iChat and FaceTime, like a fucking amateur.

“Look,” he says, too ashamed to look at Bishop. “I deserve whatever comes my way, okay? I won’t betray the club. I’ll do the time.”

“You might not have to,” the lawyer says. “The law… offers us a way out. We would need to make a few, uh, adjustments, talk to the right people, backdate some papers… but it might work.”

“What might work?”

The lawyer stares intently at his own hands. “The California Evidence Law sections 970 and 971 regulate a… particular kind of privilege, which states that, under some circumstances, even in a criminal case a person can’t be forced to testify in court, and has the right not to disclose any confidential communications between themselves and the accused.”

“Dope,” Coco says, even though he has enough life experience to know that good news like that come with an expensive price tag. “Where’s the problem?”

Again, an awkward silence settles over the room. Coco is tired of being the butt of the joke. Gilly, however, gives him a sharp look, like a warning: _calm the fuck down_. Coco wants to live, and he wants to live outside of prison, so he tries to sit still.

“This is stupid,” Taza mumbles, just as the lawyer says: “For sections 970 and 971 to apply… you would have to be legally married.”

*

Coco is sprawled on the sofa, chain-smoking and watching Die Hard reruns on a loop. He isn’t enjoying it in the slightest. He’s going over the events of the day in slow motion, the bitter taste of shame and humiliation rolling back and forth under his tongue, spoiling the tang of the cigarette. Fuck the Feds and fuck the lawyer, fuck the Governor’s daughter and, more than anyone else, _fuck me_ , Coco thinks.

This is the typical brand of self-sabotage he’s been practicing religiously for all his life. Things start going well? Well, look out for Coco: he’ll blow up and make a mess of everything, guaranteed to entertain for at least a couple of days. This time, from the looks of it, he might be forced to keep up the show for a stint of fifteen-to-twenty years.

Of course, there’s always _the plan_. Coco scoffs and drops the cigarette butt into an empty beer can. Leave it to a lawyer to come up with a solution that’s scarier than prison.

Coco hears the bike when it’s still a couple of blocks away, but he doesn’t move until the doorbell’s ringing. He tears himself off the sofa, and grabs another beer from the coffee table, gulping it down as he walks to the door. Angel is at the bottom of the stairs, looking out into the street, and he turns around to nod at Coco but doesn’t take his sunglasses off. It stings.

“You need a shower,” Angel says.

“You need to shut up.”

Angel comes in uninvited, dropping his head and quickly looking around every room, surveying, and subtly judging like a fucking mother-in-law coming over for the holidays. Coco walks after him, and he can feel himself bristle. In the living room, Angel takes a seat on the sofa, takes a half-smoked joint from the ashtray and lights it up. His sunglasses hang from the collar of his shirt, he looks at Coco, cocks an eyebrow and says:

“Go on, we don’t have all day,” and he breathes out a cloud of thick smoke that half-hides his face.

Coco can hardly believe the nerve on this man; but he’s the one who fucked up, he’s the one who’s about to do some serious time, and most importantly, he really does stink like the floor of a dive bar. He stops to take two drags off the joint before going, though.

*

They go for a ride. Coco’s hair, damp at the tips when they set off, is perfectly dry by the time Angel finally pulls over. The desert stretches out, pretty and unforgiving, until the edge of the sky eats her up. They leave their bikes just off the side of the road and walk in silence for a while, Angel guiding the two of them down a dune and then around it, further away, until they hit a pretty sort-of valley and they can’t see the road anymore. Coco lights a cigarette, and he feels irrationally angry and bitter about everything, but the sun is setting and it’s a beautiful fucking view, especially with the way the soft orange glow hits Angel’s face in all the right places.

It’ll make for a pretty memory for when Coco is going to be coughing up blood, shivved in gen pop his fourth day on the inside by some faceless sicario (he’d be a fool to think he’d last any longer).

Angel steps closer, gestures for Coco to pass the Zippo. Coco is angry at him but still can’t deny him a thing; Angel takes his sweet time to light the cigarette, every move slow and careful like he’s been practicing—and in a way, he has: a lifetime as a smoker can be considered practice. Coco shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“You’re freaking me out, carnal,” he says, trying to laugh it off. Angel doesn’t even smile. If anything, his eyes are even more intense now.

“Ain’t no way you’re going to prison.”

There it is: Angel Reyes, never one for subtlety or nuances. It’s a miracle, really, that the club never found out about their little agreement with Adelita. Coco still wonders how they managed to pull it off.

He shakes his head, shrugs some ash off the tip of his cigarette.

“It’s a done deal.”

“Fuck off,” Angel bites back, and the force behind his words hits Coco like a kick to the chest. Angel is getting angry, worked up. “The plan is a done deal.”

“The plan?”

“Yeah, _the fucking plan_.”

“The plan’s fucked up, carnal,” Coco says, shaking his head and laughing a little, and if either of them says the words _the plan _again, he knows his brain is going to explode.__

 _ _Angel comes charging, eyes lit up with a fury that Coco knows he deserves, but still doesn’t like; he stops two steps before he comes crashing into Coco, and the hard line of his mouth makes it clear this is not a discussion: this is Angel giving orders. Coco wants to laugh.__

 _ _“You’ll do what the lawyer says,” Angel says, his voice low and rough.__

 _ _“I don’t think you get what the lawyer said—”__

 _ _“I was fucking _there_ , I heard ‘em,” Angel barks, chucking away the cigarette with way too much force; his face is something else, with the low, setting sun painting long shadows under his cheekbones and jaw, hitting his deep dark eyes in just the right way to make them shine; his lips curled back in a cruel snarl, his right hand raised and clenched in a fist, biceps taut like he consciously needs to keep himself in check not to take a swing at Coco’s face. “And you’re not gonna—”__

 _ _Coco can’t help but interrupt, “Why are you so fucking angry?!”__

 _ _“Why am I—?!” Angel looks so outraged he can’t put words together for a moment; both his fists, they fly in front of his mouth, to keep insults in and punches at bay. If he could spit fire right now, Coco’d be toasted to coal. He breathes, in and out, his eyes never leaving Coco’s, not even for a second, so there’s a development, at least. “I buried your mother.”__

 _ _“I ain’t forgotten that—”__

 _ _“ _I buried your mother_ ,” Angel says again, in a way that clearly means fuck you, shut up, let me finish this or I’ll have your blood on me faster than you can say sorry, “and I ain’t asking for anything in return, never will—I did it to keep you out of fucking prison, querido, so the least you can do, is show just a fucking ounce of respect for my efforts, and try and stay out.”__

 _ _Alright—Coco was expecting a beating, he’s still pretty sure he deserves it; what he didn’t expect was to get hit by this kind of raw honesty, and righteous fury. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, let alone with Angel in this state.__

 _ _“Shit, Angel, I don’t—” he starts to say, but Angel effectively shuts him up by shoving a small, square, metal box into his face. Something rattles in it, and Coco’s eyes go wide as saucers. “What—?”__

 _ _“Take it. Coco, I swear to God—just take it, then we’ll go back to the scrapyard and get this madness over with.”__

 _ _Still hesitant, Coco takes the box. He squints against the light catching on the battered metal. It gets stuck when he opens it. Inside, there are two silver rings, scratched and _alive_ in the best possible way. If Coco moves the box, they slide around it with a satisfying clattering sound: they’re heavy, real. One is slightly larger—Angel’s, Coco’s brain supplies, like it’s a normal thought to have—but otherwise, they’re identical: a sturdy band, with a Mayan calendar carved at the front. No frills, no useless stones, and they look like they’d hurt a lot in a fight.__

 _ _“I don’t—wear rings,” Coco says, carefully picking the smaller one out of the box. Angel is impossibly close, now, but he has the nerve to look as embarrassed as Coco feels.__

 _ _“I know,” he says, and suddenly he’s gone all soft and tolerant, and even if Coco can kind of see his strategy here, it doesn’t mean he knows how to resist. Angel Reyes is too fucking good at this shit, he can’t be beaten. “I know, but I’ll be damned if I don’t do this right.”__

 _ _That pulls a sincere laugh out of Coco’s shrinking lungs; it really does. He rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop staring at the fucking ring and he knows that Angel noticed. Something warm wraps around Coco’s cheek: it’s Angel’s hand, big and hardened by every single day of his life. He cups the side of Coco’s face and pulls him in a little, resting their foreheads together for a moment.__

 _ _Coco is about to explode, so he says, “What about Adelita?”__

 _ _Angel’s shoulders start trembling, and it takes Coco a second to realize it’s because he’s laughing.__

 _ _“Your friend Dan Quixote can take care of her,” Angel says, with a small smile. Coco squints up at him.__

 _ _“You have no idea what you’re talking about, yeah?”__

 _ _Angel doesn’t waste any time with answering him. He takes the fucking smaller ring, and slips it on Coco’s finger, without a warning, without a moment’s hesitation, without permission. Coco wants to protest, but Angel holds his hand, looks at the ring and then up at him, and he looks so fucking serious he makes Coco’s head spin.__

 _ _“This is not… make-believe, carnal. It’s not some show for the Feds, you hear me? It’s real. I’ll take care of you, every single day,” he runs the pad of his thumb over the engraving. “Your life is my life now.”__

 _ _Something soft and hot like the surface of the sun has lodged itself halfway through Coco’s throat when he says, “Yeah. Alright. I still ain’t no piss-for-brains princess, cariño,” he breathes in, and he can only hope he’s giving Angel a look as good as the one he’s getting, “I’ll protect you, too. Your blood is my blood.”__

 _ _It should earn him a kiss, but it doesn’t. Coco spends the entire ride back pretending he’s not bitter about it.__

 _ ___

*

When they get back to the scrapyard, everyone’s there, clean and dressed up. The Sons came down from Redwood, carrying gifts and booze. El Padrino is fucking there, and Adelita and a couple of the older Olvidados. Coco stares at Angel, wide-eyed, and Angel simply shrugs as if to say, _I had not doubt I could talk you into this_.

EZ starts the barbecue, and everyone’s in a cheery mood. It feels like the Fourth of July, except they’re all gathered for Coco’s fucking marriage to Angel, Jesus Christ: where’s the toxic homophobia, the distrust, the hate? Coco gets congratulations that are mostly non-sarcastic, a couple winks too many, but Leticia is radiant in her dress and when Angel gets him a beer, Coco is surprised to hear it clang against the ring he already forgot he’s wearing.

Soon enough, the ink on the papers is dry, the court official has been bribed into happiness and the date on the marriage certificate is set to three months ago, so that it’ll work as a free pass against civic duty. Bishop and Gilly looked way too amused as they stepped up to co-sign as best men, and the photoshoot lasts way, way too long.

“Remember to change the date on the pictures as well,” the lawyer says, shaking their hands before leaving with a mandatory plastic bag filled with burgers and a couple cans of beer.

Everyone’s already too wasted to remember to ask for a toast, for which Coco is endlessly grateful. The party fuels itself and spirals into the usual mess of drugs and sex and laughter; he gives Leticia a ride home and, when he comes back, Gilly is dancing half-naked and carefree with a couple of girls, and he gestures for Coco to join in.

Coco finds himself grinning. He grabs a bottle of tequila out of a bucket and runs towards the bonfire.

It’s another hour before he stumbles to a darker corner of the scrapyard, where they dragged out a couple of armchairs and a sofa. Angel is sitting there, smoking by himself. The ring on his finger is shiny and brazen and it feels very much like a declaration of war. Coco is not as drunk as he’s pretending to be; he flops down next to Angel and offers the tequila. Angel touches his fingers when he takes the bottle, then he downs a long swig. His throat working around the liquor is a mesmerizing sight.

 _All mine_ , Coco thinks, overwhelmed with a warm, sudden need to touch Angel’s neck. With his mouth.

“Thought you wanted to do this right,” he says instead, half-surprised at how detached his own voice sounds.

Angel looks at him, one eyebrow arching. He points at all the people going crazy in the scrapyard—it’s everyone they know, their friends, having the time of their lives, and it’s in their fucking honor.

“What’s wrong with the party?”

“Nah, that’s perfect,” Coco shakes his head. He wishes he wasn’t this sober when he says: “Still haven’t kissed me.”

Angel leans back, now both his eyebrows are up and his mouth hangs slightly open and is it still a sin if Coco’s having sinful thoughts about what is legally his husband? Shit, everything’s confusing.

“I haven’t?” Angel asks, like he truly hasn’t noticed. Coco wants to roll his eyes but he can’t. He’s too busy staring at Angel’s mouth.

“Thought you wanted to do this right,” he says again, stupidly. Angel chuckles, and in the dancing bonfire light, he looks almost unreal. He moves in slow motion, but maybe that’s just Coco’s brain playing its usual tricks; Angel smiles with his lips so close to Coco’s it’s torture.

“Everyone knows you’re mine now,” he says, making a point not to hide the smugness in his tone. Then he fucking leans in and catches Coco’s mouth with his, biting at his weak groan of protest, and Coco’s hands are in Angel’s hair, pulling hard, and the torture is over.  


**Author's Note:**

> LET ME DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF FLUFF.


End file.
